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Practical Parenting Series: Neil McNerney

Today’s practical parenting seminar was with Sabrina Marasovich and author Neil McNerney. He is a marriage and family therapist and counsellor and the main topic he spoke about was leadership styles.

We’re all wondering what kind of parent to be. There is so much out there but one of the difficulties is finding a style that works for us. Your style of parenting should depend on what your child is up to.

How do you lead your kids when he comes to school work? As parents we use the word helping alot but most kids love to be independent and don’t really want our help (or need it!) but they do need our leadership.

Most of what we do well when we’re parenting fits into one of these 3 leadership styles. So when should you do each of these?

The Supporter
The one we love to do. All the things we think about when our kids our young, the good stuff. Complimenting our kids, cheering them on, encouraging them. Being there when they are crying and sad or upset. The supporter is there for our kids during the good times and the bad times. But we so often mess up being the supporter. E.g. – Your son comes up to you, he’s in 4th grade and he’s been getting C’s and D’s. Today he comes home and he has a B- on his vocabulary test. You say “great job” and then go on talking and talking which takes away the compliment. Things we’d say might be: What can you do next time to keep that grade up?
But when we say that, what they are hearing is “This grade isn’t good enough!” Another one we say is “See, I told you if you study harder you’d do better” but all your child hears is “I told you so”. “Keep up the good work” is another negative one. All the child hears is “Why do I have to focus on the next one, why can’t you stay happy with this grade?” Neil’s advice was “praise the child and then keep quiet! Move on quickly so you don’t end up saying something the child misinterprets!”
We also need to understand the differences between boys and girls. When boys get overpraised, they see it as being evaluated. When girls get overpraised, they see it as relationship building.

I’m proud of you vs. I’m impressed with you – Sometimes when kids are doing well and getting better at something, we say “I’m proud of you”, it sounds to them like “We’re ashamed of you when you’re not doing well”. So instead replace it with “I’m impressed with you”.

It’s important to get our children to self-evaluate. Ask them “How do you feel about your better grade?”

The Consultant
A consultant is somebody that has a certain expertise in a field, has good observational skills and then is able to communicate those observational skills to effect change. As parents, we have certain expertise in life that we’ve learned over the years and we try and communicate this to our children. When we don’t do it (giving advice) well, we’re nagging. Being a great consultant is to be a) tentative in your advice (how you begin it and how you end it). b) have shoulder to shoulder communication – When you have some tough talking to be done with your kids, rather than get angry and then go up to your kids face to face, talk to them “shoulder to shoulder” (at a table, at the kitchen counter, in the car, etc.) Have what you want to show them in front of you so that you can look at it together. It decreases the intensity of the situation.

“The more that we try to parent out of an angry place, the less successful we will be”.

If we can stay calm during the little things, we’re showing our kids that we can stay calm during the tougher things as well and our children will trust us more.

The Boss
The Boss is the one that rewards and punishes. We all tend to be the boss quite quickly, especially when we get frustrated. And when we are the boss, we tend to become the punisher and over-punish. It’s important to recognise stop behaviours and start behaviours. Stop behaviour is when you want your child to stop doing something because it is wrong but start behaviour is not wrong, it just means the child should be doing something else instead. Stop behaviour should be punished and start behaviour should be rewarded.
With that in mind, when you think about homework, is that a stop or start behaviour? It’s a start behaviour. And therefore, rewards rather than punishment work a lot better for children. Rewards are more motivating. Sometimes though it is how you phrase things. E.g. – “If you don’t finish your homework, you can’t go to the football game on Friday night”. That sounds de-motivating and like a punishment. Instead you could say “If you finish all of your homework this week, you can go to the football game on Friday”. This makes it sound like a reward and the child will feel like they are working towards something.
We have so many opportunities in our child’s life to shift things around, to move from what sounds like a punishment to something that sounds like a reward.

We should aim to approach our children with the supporter or consultant leadership role before moving on to the boss leadership role. However, if we have a particularly defiant child then only the boss style will work.

It’s better to be responsive parents rather than reactive parents. The mistakes we make as parents greatly reduces when we respond rather that react.

I’ve really enjoyed listening to the first two seminars. However, I do feel like sometimes there is a lot of over analysis of how we should speak to our children. A friend on Facebook put up this quote up yesterday: “It is our job to prepare our children for the road…not prepare the road for our children”. And this really resonated with me. By watching every single thing we say to our child so that that they are not de-motivated or so that we don’t hurt their feelings, are we raising children who will be unable to handle the world out there?! Because I can tell you, people out there aren’t worried about our feelings or how what they say affects us.

3 thoughts on “Practical Parenting Series: Neil McNerney”

This is a very interesting article Nats. I wish I had access to so much info during my time. Would have adopted some of the principles of parenting. Glad you do and also notice the amount of interest you take in such matters. Good luck.